The BC owner hollered after him "Just 'cause he's big doesn't mean he's tough, my dog could beat yours any day" pretty bad when the kid is more mature than a grown man.

That's funny, I haven't really thought of it until now, but we've ran into a couple of guys with dogs smaller than Bava who seem to want to provoke the dogs into a fight or something. Why the heck would anyone want to do that? In every situation Bava has just ignored the other dog.. I love that dog.

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“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

I have encountered that as well, unfortunately. It has ben on rare occasions, but at our dog park some people think it is funny if their much smaller dog picks a fight with Gunther. I have alot of people to back me up as we go there on a very regular basis, and Gunther is very shy around new dogs, to the point of being fear aggressive towards them so I find this totally reckless on the part of the owners. Of course if it comes to the point where he finally snaps at them b/c they aren't taking his hints, well then he is a big mean dog.

Thankfully I have him trained to the point where I can see his breaking point and tell him to "leave it" and he will try his hardest to walk away from the situation, which isn't always easy with a dog getting in your face. I usually try to stay out of it if at all possible, b/c he's a big enough mama's boy the way it is, I prefer if he can work out his problems on his own. But I have had to jump in if it goes from just picking on him to full on aggression (which surprisingly we have not had an occurence of since he's been 1 yr old......for awhile there it was fairly frequent)

When I was doing distraction training I didn't allow Earnest (my Lab/DaneX)to socialize on-lead, and I took him to Petsmart to practice. I still don't allow him to "say hello" on the leash, my feeling being he's supposed to be paying attention to me on lead, not looking for buddies. But I didn't block the aisles or the doors, either, and I was polite about saying "I'm sorry, he's in training, he's not allowed to say hello".Last week we took both boys to Petsmart, Earnest has a few months left on his Banfield contract, and he needed a bordatella shot. We always take them on their 18" traffic leads, with their prong collars. I use a flexi everywhere else, but a long lead is not appropriate IMO, in a store. So my son Levi (14) and Phyfe, my St./OEM X went looking around the store. Levi was standing near the end of an aisle, with some people gathered around talking about and petting Phyfe. This guy with a Border Collie approached, stopped about 12 feet away, and let the BC run out the flexi lead. The BC started growling at Phyfe and Levi. Phyfe is in no way dog aggressive, but he's VERY protective of Levi, that's his job. So he let out a HUGE roar and wrinkled up his face to show that BC how much bigger his teeth were. The passersby took off, I don't blame them, Phyfe with his face all bunched up is really scary. Levi kept his head and did just the right thing, he said "Phyfe, let's go" spun Phyfe around and walked off in the opposite direction. The BC owner hollered after him "Just 'cause he's big doesn't mean he's tough, my dog could beat yours any day" pretty bad when the kid is more mature than a grown man. A worker did check to make sure Levi was ok, and came to the vet's office to apologize. They asked the BC owner to leave, he got huffy and tried to blame Phyfe, but the people who had been looking on saw the whole thing, and defended my boys. We've had stuff like that happen before, usually it's Phyfe that gets the bad rap, just because he's so big, and his roar is so loud and scary.

When I was doing distraction training I didn't allow Earnest (my Lab/DaneX)to socialize on-lead, and I took him to Petsmart to practice. I still don't allow him to "say hello" on the leash, my feeling being he's supposed to be paying attention to me on lead, not looking for buddies. But I didn't block the aisles or the doors, either, and I was polite about saying "I'm sorry, he's in training, he's not allowed to say hello".Last week we took both boys to Petsmart, Earnest has a few months left on his Banfield contract, and he needed a bordatella shot. We always take them on their 18" traffic leads, with their prong collars. I use a flexi everywhere else, but a long lead is not appropriate IMO, in a store. So my son Levi (14) and Phyfe, my St./OEM X went looking around the store. Levi was standing near the end of an aisle, with some people gathered around talking about and petting Phyfe. This guy with a Border Collie approached, stopped about 12 feet away, and let the BC run out the flexi lead. The BC started growling at Phyfe and Levi. Phyfe is in no way dog aggressive, but he's VERY protective of Levi, that's his job. So he let out a HUGE roar and wrinkled up his face to show that BC how much bigger his teeth were. The passersby took off, I don't blame them, Phyfe with his face all bunched up is really scary. Levi kept his head and did just the right thing, he said "Phyfe, let's go" spun Phyfe around and walked off in the opposite direction. The BC owner hollered after him "Just 'cause he's big doesn't mean he's tough, my dog could beat yours any day" pretty bad when the kid is more mature than a grown man. A worker did check to make sure Levi was ok, and came to the vet's office to apologize. They asked the BC owner to leave, he got huffy and tried to blame Phyfe, but the people who had been looking on saw the whole thing, and defended my boys. We've had stuff like that happen before, usually it's Phyfe that gets the bad rap, just because he's so big, and his roar is so loud and scary.

I wouldn't have had a problem with that but this lady had no control over her dog and if she was that concerned about her dog she should have had better control over him.

We took Savannah to Petsmart the other day to get more dog bowls and there was this huge guy in there with his little bitty Schipperke. Savannah was like oh! Doggie! Let's go see it! and pulled and tugged on the line. We were about 30 feet away. I tightened up her lead and the guy bent down and kept his eye on me to pick up his dog. He told him/her no no (whatever the name was) that dog is much bigger than you and could eat you

I grinned at him and said oh she's only 6 months old she won't do that. He kinda grinned back and kept going, but a least he tried to avoid any confrontation. I applaud him for that. At least he wasn't a butt about it. She did get to play with someone's puppy who was in for some follow-up training.

I think it is great he avoided confrontation, especially since neither of your dogs knew each other. But I can't tell you how tired I am of hearing people say to their dogs, "oh, you don't want to go see those doggies, they'll eat you" or something like that. I find it soooo frustrating.

It happened again at the vet today. A guy was sitting with his dog, right next to the door, no less. I couldn't see the dog at first b/c it was under the bench, hidden. I bring my two in, and Keiko wants to go over to say hello. I corrall them over to the front desk, and that's when the guys enormous chihuahua runs out from under the bench and starts growling and snapping it's teeth. My two completely ignore the dog, which I think pissed it off even more. They usher us into a room and I can hear the guy say, "stop that now, he could eat you in one bite". I mean, at least he was trying to get his dog to knock it off, but I really hate hearing comments like that.